Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin with Steve and Yuxuan.
Universal key that can open the control box of elevator ads.
Over 100 silent screams, a debatable or possibly illegal move.
That is the storyline behind a viral moment in Shanghai this fall, but also a spark that has reignited a longstanding public irritation.
Elevator ads that many residents never approved and can never avoid.
When frustration meets legal ambiguity, the question becomes where exactly do personal rights, commercial rights and also community rights intersect and who gets the final say?
And we welcome you to our happy place where we share something that has put a smile on our face during the past week.
Hopefully it will do the same for you.
But first, Elevator rides used to be the city's last pocket of peace.
Now they are a miniature Times Square, minus the excitement, but with the same amount of flashing screens.
So when one college student decided to shut down noise pollution one elevator at a time, the internet cheered, though lawyers front.
It turns out that turning off the ads is easy.
Figuring out who has the legal right to do so is the hard part.
So I have so many questions.
How did he do it?
Where did he get the key?
Exactly why would he go so extreme in doing so?
Is that illegal?
But before answering all these questions, what exactly happened?
Yeah actually, this October, a college junior in Shanghai decided that he had had enough of the noisy elevator advertisements that blared endlessly in their building with that universal key that he bought online for just 10 yuan.
That's about $1.40.
He spent five days.
Wow, he's quite...
Persistent.
It was a project.
He spent five days quietly moving from building to building, plugging in the key and then shutting down over 100 screens.
Yeah.
So just to kind of paint a picture here, a lot of the community complexes, the apartment complexes.
In the elevator, they'll have a screen that's not built into the wall.
It's attached to the wall.
Think of it like I don't know, like a small computer monitor or something like that, just attached to the wall.
And through that screen, companies will pay to advertise their products.
And the companies are, you know, they vary.
You'll have different companies trying to advertise different things.
The advertisements can be quite loud.
Sometimes, yes.
The speaker volume.
Considering the confined space that you're in, it can be a little intrusive to your ears.
So this college kid, he said enough is enough.
He bought a universal key online and he...
Like you said, five days just shutting these things down.
That's the point that I would like to mention.
This is the separate screen that these advertisement provider are providing for these elevator.
And then, because these screens aren't part of the elevators original system, it can be seen as safe if you just shut the screen down.
Without hurting the safety of the elevator running.
He wasn't messing with the elevators at all.
He was only simply turning off the screens, just like you would turn off your computer screen, although you do need a special key for that.
Is his Robin Hood-like action got any reaction among the neighbors?
A lot.
A lot.
Of course.
People were saying that, oh, there's finally somebody's doing that.
I've been wanting to do that for a long time.
But of course, this is not an encouraged behavior that the community wants him to do.
The company who put out these elevator ads in the first place describes its ad as high attention and low interference.
But Still a lot of people are saying that the sound is just too loud and it is affecting their life.
And even though I personally I don't think they are that annoying, because you will stay in the elevator for probably less than one minute, maybe two times a day.
Yeah, I can kind of bear that.
But still some of these advertisements can be really repetitive and remind you of some childhood advertisement that's saying that same line again and again.
Just want you to remember that brand name.
So i understand that kind of sentiment.
The reason that people are debating over it is because many residents would consider the area of an elevator in their own building directly to their homes, somewhere semi-public and semi-personal.
As a home owner of the community, of the residential community, we feel like we have a say somehow in whether or not we agree in having those ads being put on in our elevators.
Who is getting the money out of these ads?
Are we being benefited?
Maybe you're using the money part of the money at least to pay for the staff working in the community.
But do we have a say legally rightfully, anything that we can, or is there any path, any way for us to have a discussion in making these decisions?
There are, like legitimate process when you want to put advertisement in that public area in this community.
Compound right, in simple terms, three things that must happen before placing elevator advertisements.
One, homeowners have to decide together whether they'd like that in the community or not, and all parties involved needs to agree for it to happen.
And the ads themselves must be illegal and compliant.
And because elevators are shared property right and turning them into ad space is considered running a business in an area owned by every single one living in this residential area.
And that requires a very, very high level of approval, not just a simple vote.
At least two thirds of the homeowners must participate.
And among those who vote, three quarters have to say yes.
And that's actually in the civil code.
Yeah.
And you also need the property management company to talk to the homeowners and get their consent before they install the screens as well, or renting out that space at all.
So as a homeowner or a resident in the residential community, personally my feeling is that if the screen is not as big as a full body mirror, that i cannot avoid.
And it's flashing at me, it's very bright, it hurts the eyesight of my kid, that is fine.
And also if the sound is not too loud, that is fine.
And also if, For example, the content on the screen is not too cheesy or a bit inappropriate for kids.
I will vote for yes in these occasions, but apparently that is not the case in all of the residential community buildings and that leads to the complaints.
Even majority of the complaints comes from these kind of extreme examples.
Well, actually, there's a rule.
There's an advertising law that says the ads are not allowed to be misleading or fake, or offensive, or harmful or against public order and good morals.
The advertisers themselves are responsible for making sure that what they put on those screens is truthful and compliant.
To address that concern that you just mentioned,
What are some other complaints we're looking at here?
Because I would assume, even if the advertisers are in line with the regulations that Steve has just mentioned, still some people would have problems with these kind of ads.
Because they are commercial advertisements, right?
When you're placing these commercial advertisements, you can actually make money out of it.
And that is also one of the issues that a lot of these homeowners are discussing.
Where does that money?
Um goes um, because that public area belongs to all the homeowners.
Right, and you are making and you are using the management.
Property management is using the public area for a commercial behavior.
So in many places in china the income from using these shared spaces like elevators for commercial ads belongs to the homeowners as a collective and for the community management teams.
There are two spots on the timeline to meet, before and after homeowners association is formed.
So before it is formed, the contract between homeowners and the property management should specify how this income is handled, like they may use it for maintenance and everything in the community compound, and then maybe after that, you can still share this kind of income with all of the homeowners.
Yeah.
If the property management or the advertisement company, if they put up screens without the approval of the people who own the homes there.
That's not allowed.
But also, if they keep all the profits for themselves...
That's not allowed, too.
And residents can actually go so far as to file a civil lawsuit to demand that the ads stop and that the revenue be returned.
I'm curious.
I didn't know about that.
I wouldn't have even thought about this if I were a homeowner.
And also I want to know the situation in other countries as well, because it seems that we do have these kind of screens in our elevators, but I do not remember seeing a lot of those, or maybe because I haven't visited a friend living overseas, so I haven't seen a residential building elevator.
I've only seen them in commercial buildings, where you'll find office spaces, where I'm sure that revenue goes back to the owner of the building and maybe gets distributed however.
I've never seen advertisements in an apartment complex before.
That being said, if it can go according to plan all the time, according to the regulations all the time, it still sounds reasonable.
But let's be honest, as a homeowner, to start with, like Steve said, who would have known this?
Who would have known that the tree planted in our community that can maybe start it to harvest allow you to harvest some apples or other kind of fruits can be part of the profit of the entire community?
Who would know the elevator ads revenue could be part of the profit of the entire community?
Would that not be common knowledge?
I don't know, because there are so many different details in different communities.
And my next point is maybe we know about this, but I don't think each and every homeowner would have the time and energy and willingness to join the homeowner's community and to make the vote to make the complaint.
Maybe some of them are sharing the same mentality, like Yusheng saying one or two minutes Two times a day.
I can bear with it.
I think I see your point.
When I lived in Korea, in one of the apartments that I lived in, they asked me.
Someone came to the door one day and asked do you want to come to the community complex meeting?
Do you want to be involved?
And I said, oh, absolutely not.
Yeah.
So I didn't even I've never even thought about that.
But it does bring up.
Your valid point is that maybe not everyone knows about this because not everyone's involved in the community group chat or
Right.
But it makes sense.
Yeah.
All the time.
Maybe they don't know what's going on.
That is why transparency is necessary in this case.
The income and maybe the spending must be accounted for separately and disclosed separately, maybe for a certain amount of time every year or every half year and open to homeowners supervision.
Of course, the property management encourage you to join that group chat and so that you can know all of the uh things going on in the community.
You have the right to not join it, but they have the um obligation to make everything transparent how much money they are made, they're making from these advertisements, how much money they're spending uh from this money and how much money have left and how much money can go back to your own account.
And speaking of going back to the community, that case that we mentioned in the very beginning, the student.
He eventually revisited one of the residential compounds that was featured in his video.
I don't know if we mentioned that.
He made a video and he put it on Xiaohongshun.
Yeah.
And it got like 4,000 plus likes.
And that's where all those comments were coming from saying, oh, yeah, good for you.
You're like a superhero.
Still not encouraged, by the way.
We didn't even talk about whether he's allowed to do that or not.
Maybe we can get to that in a sec.
But anyway, he went back and he found that the property management, they had already turned the elevator screens back on.
Aw.
Well, they would, obviously, right?
And they pointed out to him that a notice board in the community's compound details the revenue that the compound receives from such advertisements, stating that it is spent exclusively on public maintenance.
So they made that point to him that yep, we make money from these advertisements but we publicly post it on the community board and there is a detailed breakdown of where that money goes.
It's used within the community.
And here i'm not pointing fingers at those residents who cheered at the college kids action yet refused to join the management club or meeting or anything in the first place.
I'm not saying you're doing something wrong.
I'm just saying maybe in these kind of cases, when everybody is doing what they're supposed to do, yet also making a choice of not, you know, taking too much care of the issue, of the things happening in the community,
If we care, if we care enough to cheer for the college kid, maybe in the future we can care enough to join the board to have the discussion.
And I don't.
In this specific case, I'm not really sure the community management has done something so wrong.
They have put up the notice, the information, making it transparency.
Maybe try also a little harder involving older residents in the decision-making process.
Find out some better advertisements to put up in the elevator.
And we are not promoting this young man at all because we haven't discussed this yet.
But is it okay to just go around from community to community turning off elevator advertisements?
No, you absolutely cannot.
And it comes with legal risks if you are going to do something like that, because using tools such as the universal key that he acquired to turn off those elevator ads without permission, that constitutes a civil violation and that could result in claims for damages.
That comes from sixth tone.
So you're listening and you're thinking oh, I want to do something like that.
Don't don't.
In this day and age.
Of course we sometimes would laugh, or at least smile, at such such stories.
It's not selfish.
It's selfless.
It's trying to do something to help the community in his own way, but definitely there are different ways to do that and there are better ways to do that.
So That rests, or close the case, I guess.
You're listening to Roundtable coming up next.
Happy place.
Don't go away.
Delivery.
Delivery.
Delivery.
What is it?
Happiness from Roundtable.
It's Roundtable with me, Niu Honglin, Steve Harderly and Yu Shun.
So what's been making us happy this week?
My happy place this week was my trip to Yunnan in southwest China.
I love Yunnan.
Yes, I stayed in this warm, culturally rich region where the local ethnic traditions are woven into their everyday lives.
You know, I got to taste food. a completely different style of cuisine.
It's a little bit sour and spicy and full of bold and refreshing flavors.
Are the dishes different than what you would find in Beijing, or are they similar, just with different flavorings?
Different.
Even like the raw materials, the things that you eat, all different.
And you can have basically totally different type of cuisines that you will have because, as you may discover that there are so many different types of cuisines in China, you can experience so many different flavors if you are traveling around China.
Also, about the environment, there is the thing that really inspired me because, surrounded by these breathtaking sceneries and bright blue skies especially, I soaked in their natural hot springs yeah, and then wandered through their ancient towns.
I lived in that ancient town.
You feel like you know, you are a character in a poem.
You, just because you were just literally living in that environment.
And then I hiked through their untouched rainforest and explored striking volcanic rock formations.
Each moment helped me unwind, layer by layer, until I felt both my body and mind gradually reset.
That's pretty far south right.
Here in Beijing, it's wintertime has arrived in Beijing.
There's no question about that.
The temperatures at night are hovering around zero or maybe plus two three four, something like that.
What is it like now in Yunnan?
A lot warmer.
Although they have huge temperature differences during the daytime and night, but Still I wear one shirt during the day.
Such a huge difference with Canada, because Canada is more of a horizontal country than it is vertical.
So wintertime in Vancouver on the far west is also wintertime in Nova Scotia on the far east.
Yeah.
But in China you've got the northern regions where it's full on winter, and then way down south it's still really quite warm.
That's also one of the most interesting parts when you're traveling in different places in China, because you can experience totally different climate.
And this trip was also a reminder that rest is quite important and necessary, because stepping away from our routine and immersing ourselves in such diverse landscapes and cultures gave me a deeper sense of that kind of balance and clarity, and also gratitude.
And for those of you who haven't visited Yunnan before, even especially if you're not living in China, you do not know the places you might want to hit Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu first.
But Yunnan is a great place.
One of the things that I love the most about Yunnan is when I was visiting Xishuangbanna, I went to the Botanical Garden, which is also the rainforest area.
I learned a lot about different vegetables, different fruits, different plants.
Plants are smart.
In the long run, after thousands of years, they find their perfect spot in the forest if they're really tall and standing up there they absorb the sun, but they also provide a cover, basically a shed, for the other plants.
And if you're a tiny little um grass, in a certain sense, you can find your spot.
You can even live on a huge tree and you would evolve and adapt the shape of your leaves, the size of yourself and even the nutrition you can absorb, based on where you are, and that's their surviving strategy.
When, when you are getting in there, you think everything's so peaceful and everything's so quiet, into the jungle yeah, but but actually that's probably the.
I never thought that about the jungle, But that's probably the result of the biological competition for thousands of years.
And maybe one plantation have already climbing on that tree for more than hundreds of years.
And they find a way to coexist in peace.
Or maybe not.
I remember this is totally off topic from a different country, but I was in Thailand and I went on this tour and the guy in the jungle told me, the guide told me, see this tree here, and how the roots come out from the top and then, like wrap themselves around the trees.
Next they're like choking them, trying to get rid of them for their own survival.
Yes and, and i think, like you should said, resting is definitely important, but going to these places not only would open a new window for you, it also gives you a fresh perspective in understanding your place in a society, understanding humans position in the nature, And that is also quite valuable.
That is something you can enjoy, especially in Yunnan province.
So that's making Yusheng happy and kind of give me something inspiring as well.
Thank you very much.
How about you, Steve?
I'm excited about and I'm happy about something that I haven't done yet.
And that's getting back in the swimming pool.
So I'm trying to, I could have done this for Motivational Monday too.
I want you guys to hold me accountable.
And you too, if you're listening to this show today, I want you to hold me accountable.
Because I'm trying to arrange a new exercise schedule for myself.
Swimming in the morning and then weightlifting in the evening.
That's a lot of exercise for a day.
That's so self-disciplined.
I've done it before in my life, once where I was able to achieve that goal for a pretty significant period of time.
And the plan was to start this previous Monday.
Well, I haven't been to the swimming pool just yet, so I've failed every single day so far, because it would require me to wake up quite a bit earlier in the morning and then get to the pool and then get out, have a shower all before I get to work.
But I'm really excited that the opportunity even exists.
And the fact that the community that I live in here not speaking about community apartment complex, but just the area itself where I live has everything that we need within walking distance.
And we've talked about that on the show.
15 minutes living circle.
But it's true.
It's really, really true.
And I found this swimming pool and I want to try to incorporate that into my, my daily life, because I'm thinking why not start things earlier in the morning?
Successful people always talk about that.
Oh yeah, I run seven kilometers at 4 30 in the morning or something like that.
That seems unachievable, but at least I want to try.
Yes, and even though maybe you do not have a goal, like Steve, you can still wake up early, start your day early, make sure that if you are doing something, you're not interrupted by the constant WeChat message from your friends, from your boss, from your colleagues.
You try to energize yourself even before sunrise.
And maybe you can also go to bed early, which is good for your overall health.
Yeah.
And the reason I chose swimming is because I love swimming more than I can explain.
I love being in the water.
When I go to the beach, the first thing I do is go for a swim.
And I could stay in that ocean all day.
So that's why I chose it.
So I'm pretty happy about that.
Yes, and I'm happy about having a happy place.
Well, at least, or more importantly, for today's happy place, because I hope that our stories can be inspiring to you too, so that you can find something that can make you happy in maybe, the coming week.
And that brings us to the end of today's Roundtable.
Thank you so much for listening.
You can send us your thoughts to roundtablepodcasts at qq.com.
I'm Niu Honglin with Yushan and Steve.
Bye.
